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S Mobility to launch new tablets this year
Kunal Ahooja, Global Head Devices, S Mobility Ltd in a tete-a-tete with Binny Sharma talked about their marketing strategy, challenges in local and global markets and new ventures in partnerships
As smartphone market is set to grow manifold than regular feature phones, what is going to be your strategy?
We did sell over 6 million handsets in year 2011 and with the new launch we aim to achieve 7 million mark this year. A small portion of 7 million will be smart phones in year 2012.
Feature phones are expected to stay for some time in Indian market. As part of our long-term strategy, we will increase our focus on smart phones. However, we will continue with feature phones. Spice feels that it will not be an easy task to compete with foreign handset makers in the smartphone market.
The company is still in a nascent stage, and is not keeping any sort of target in terms of market share. However, the company believes that it will improve significantly in coming 2-3 years.
Last year Spice launched Spice 7 inch and 3G ready Mi-720 tablet. Are you planning to come out with some new launches this year as well?
The company is having aggressive plans in the category of tablets. We have plans to launch two new tablets this year for the Indian market. The company will launch tablets focusing on Wi-Fi connectivity, as there is a big demand for such tablets in the Indian market.
You have business operations in few South-Asian and African countries also. How is your market growing in those countries?
Spice has strong foothold in Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand. We stand at third rank in these markets in terms of mobile marketshare after Samsung and Nokia. Nepal, Bangladesh, Uganda, Tanzania, Zimbabwe and Sri Lanka are few other countries where our market is growing at a good pace.
Every brand has its USP, what is yours?
Despite a rise in the amount of malware targeted at mobile devices, only a fraction of smartphones and tablets are protected by security software, With a visible upward trend in mobile payments and m-commerce in India we at Spice are sensitive to the situation and hence are offering security solutions to all our users. In future we hope to constantly innovate and offer value added solutions to all our users.
We have plans to bring new devices with ‘WoW’ features such as secured Android.
Tell us something about your tie-up with NQ Mobile which is having its operations in more than 150 countries
The solutions offered by NQ includes an antivirus that will provide real time protection from malicious internet threats in our smart phones and other mobile devices. Other key features include anti-theft and vault privacy lock for mobile applications.
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